


To Bring a Little Peace

by Capriciously_Terminal



Category: Cinderbrush (Web Series)
Genre: Aff is not first aide trained and we regret it, Angst, Fluff, Inner Dialogue, Introspection, Mild Hurt/Comfort, No kisses that aren't canon but they think about it a lot, Oneshot, Other, Pining, They/Them pronouns for Jamie this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28595088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capriciously_Terminal/pseuds/Capriciously_Terminal
Summary: And maybe it’s the weirdness, or the last hurrah of the drugs, or the memory of Amanda vibrating with excitement beside them on the way to Cameron’s house that has Aff’s eyes stuck on the burns and Jamie hardly moving.It’s most certainly not the memory of Amanda bleeding as Aff was useless to help that lurks at their back as they slowly bend and only let out a little grunt as they fish the bandaids out from under the front seat.A oneshot in the truck after the rave, where a werewolf tries to bring a witch some peace.
Relationships: Aff Flowers/Jamie Wrenly, Sasha Murasaki/Cameron Solomon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	To Bring a Little Peace

_It isn’t weird that after everything that’s been going on, Aff can’t stop staring at Jamie. It’s not. Really. It’s the drugs, or the terror, or a million other things that are making it feel like Aff can’t take their eyes away from the force of nature that is Jamie Wrenly._

After all Cameron manages to keep his eyes on the road (and make better turns than Aff), but he still can’t seem to stop himself from glancing to the side at Sasha when she isn’t looking.

He’s looking at Sasha like even though he kissed Aff under a canoe when they were young and stupid, and even though he was dancing with Aimee just a few hours ago, he’ll always come back to looking at Sasha.

And Cameron’s the coolest guy Aff knows. He made an ascot out of a napkin, so it’s obviously okay.

And then there’s Sasha, who is still the most well put together person Aff has ever seen, who kisses like running through the hills as fast as you can and looks to be carved perfectly of ice.

She kept her eyes on Cameron in the front seat even while her hands were all over Aff before they peeled away from the rave. Sasha helped pack Aff’s side with an old band t-shirt of their dad’s, but her eyes were burning into the back of Cameron’s head the whole time before she climbed up front to sit with him.

So, if she was staring and nobody was going to comment on it, it’s obviously fine for Aff to do the same.

The shirt was one they hid in the truck after they shredded it during a fit after they found out about the move. They’d always meant to stitch it back together and circle it back into their wardrobe.

But then again they also always meant to learn to sew, which still never happened.

Instead the shirt had been banished to the piles of stuff hidden in the truck. It was all they had to use because the box of bandaids they had jammed under the driver’s seat wasn’t going to do shit for a stab wound. And Aff wasn’t in a position to argue with Sasha when she shoved the junk in their truck around and came up with it.

_They never much liked that shirt anyway, it wasn’t a clearly important symbol of fatherly love that they had destroyed. They don’t even care. Which is great because Aff probably is gonna have to burn it to make sure their dad isn’t even more pissed at them for coming home with a torn heirloom covered in blood after lying to his face. They’ll just say it got lost in the move. Yeah. Never tell Dad about destroying the shirt he lovingly passed down to them. Never tell Dad about getting stabbed. Never tell Dad about the rave. Never tell Dad about Amanda. Amanda who is–_

And, okay, Jamie’s eyes are still doing whatever it is that makes them look like there’s nothing inside their head except the dark void of space, so it’s kind of hard for Aff to tell exactly where they’re looking.

But they’ve been looking there without moving for at least twenty minutes.

And if they’ve caught Aff staring they haven’t said anything about it.

And Jamie’s the raddest person Aff has ever seen. So it’s really okay for Aff to stare.

_But like, where else was Aff supposed to look? Out the window? When they looked out the window all they noticed was how the expanse of the desert rushed by under the endless sky. Aff has to wonder if there’s a horse somewhere out there in the night, running and running until it reaches the dawn. And then it’s easy to imagine Amanda on that horse, crying with absolute fucking joy from touching it. Running and free. And not splayed out and bleeding under a knife while Aff does nothing–._

And then Aff wants to cry, but that’s probably because of the drugs, and they can’t cry at three in the morning in their car with the three coolest kids in their new school, obviously.

_So, yeah. No looking out the window._

And Aff’s kind of worried for Jamie, if they’re being honest. Because they’re really fucking scary right now.

Granted, Jamie was always scary, in an impressive way that Aff knew they cultivated like a poisonous orchid. But even at their iciest there were a few isolated moments in Aff’s mind that always stuck out.

_Jamie in class, not moving an inch as they promised Mr. Kempler that they saw the bird too._

_Jamie drolly pointing towards the way to the cafeteria on the first day (even if Aff forgot where it was immediately) after just a moment of staring as Aff stood lost in a sea of new people._

_And now the feeling of Jamie’s hands on their shoulders as the flickering lights of the party caught in the lenses of their glasses, the warm shivers sent down Aff’s spine from kissing them. They could be surprisingly soft, surprisingly kind, when they wanted to be._

But when Aff limped to the side to let Jamie climb in the truck first, their glasses slipped imperceptibly down their nose and the two of them locked eyes. Aff looked into the impossible darkness within the eyes of Jamie Wrenly and felt something deep in their heart curl in on itself to hide. Looking at Jamie was like looking at a tornado from miles away, like seeing the wind rip a tree out of the ground. Like watching night fall.

_And that darkness hasn’t shifted an inch through the entire car ride._

Their elbows are propped up on their knees, palms open to show how the skin there has gone swollen and blistering from their grip on the dagger. And yet they’re hardly moving. Even as Cam makes slow, winding turns down the roads of the desert that occasionally have Aff’s shoulder jostle against theirs, Jamie doesn’t move.

It’s like brushing against a statue. A statue of witch that Aff kissed with tongue who holds their burning palms up to the sky while their face is frozen in cool acceptance. As if nothing painful will ever touch them.

Granted, Aff’s not one to talk about weird reactions to pain as they’ve been stabbed, and are being pretty cool about it, but they’re a werewolf. And at times they can almost feel their skin shifting back together under their hand. It doesn’t hurt.

But it does feel pretty weird.

And maybe it’s the weirdness, or the last hurrah of the drugs, or the memory of Amanda vibrating with excitement beside them on the way to Cameron’s house that has Aff’s eyes stuck on the burns and Jamie hardly moving.

It’s most certainly _not_ the memory of Amanda bleeding as Aff was useless to help that lurks at their back as they slowly bend and only let out a little grunt as they fish the bandaids out from under the front seat.

They don’t have anything to clean the burns with exactly, but Aff remembers their dad wrapping a bandaid around their finger when they were like eight and burned it trying to fish a wayward noodle out from under a boiling pot. He said to cover burns.

_Aff wonders if Jamie’s dad ever told them something similar. Aff wonders if Jamie has a dad. It’s kind of hard to imagine Jamie posing for a Christmas card or going fishing on a Saturday morning._

The box is only half-full from the various scrapes Aff has needed them after (fights and bursts of rage in equal amounts), and they’re kind of old, but the bandaids are covered in butterflies, so it feels appropriate. For a moment Aff feels the frequencies.

“Hey, uh, Jamie?” Aff jiggles the bandaid box in the most appealing way they can. “You mind if I help with the–uh–the…magic…dagger burns?”

If they heard Aff they certainly don’t give a sign. They don’t even move.

“Don’t move so much,” Sasha says, her eyes flashing to Aff in the rearview. Ice drips from each word, but exhaustion coats her voice and makes it slightly rough.

“Yeah, Aff,” Cameron says after looking to Sasha.

“Oh, it’s fine,” Aff says. Their voice comes out a bit too loud, almost like a barking laugh, and it makes Cameron’s shoulders leap up to his ears in the small space of the truck. Aff pretends not to notice, and then forgets at the sign of the slightest movement of Jamie’s head at the sound of their voice. “I heal like wicked fast. I swear. Here, look.” Aff only winces a little as they peel the t-shirt from their side. “See, now I look like I’ve only been half stabbed. And that’s like way better than a whole stab, right?”

Sasha’s disgust and slight horror at the stab wound is almost funny, and that’s probably what draws the faint chuckle from Jamie’s mouth.

Definitely not the sound of Aff’s voice.

That would be dumb, and crazy, and Aff shouldn’t think like that.

They shift and hold their hands out to Aff with an almost familiar eyebrow quirk and bare their teeth in a way that is close to being a smile. Aff wonders if this is something like a blessing or a boon from Jamie.

Aff carefully slips each ring over the pale lengths of Jamie’s fingers, over each immaculately painted black nail.

_If it hurts they don’t say, but Aff watched Jamie hold that dagger with both hands even as the smell of cooking skin hit the air and refuse to cry out._

It’s strange how in spite of the blood and the chase and the party, Jamie’s nail polish remains perfectly intact.

_Aff wonders if there’s a spell for that._

Their nails are stubby, bitten, and there’s blood smeared under them in comparison. But that doesn’t seem to do anything about the way their breath catches in their chest with the removal of each ring. With the fact that Jamie is letting them remove even such small things from their person.

When looking at Jamie it’s almost impossible to separate the kid from the hat, the harness, or the glasses. And yet with each ring Aff feels like Jamie is baring some some hidden part of themselves under the moon.

Their hands seem softer without the rings, lighter. Something gentle unspools between the two of them, or at least it unspools from Aff at the sight of Jamie’s pale but burned hands.

They have no idea what Jamie is feeling as Aff for once can’t find anything to fill the silence with, but then again not knowing what is going on with Jamie is pretty constant. They slip the rings into a front pocket of their jacket, aware that if they lose a single one Jamie will probably make them think wasps are crawling around in their eyeballs.

Which will suck.

_But it is easier to think about the wasps than the gentle press of Jamie’s fingers against theirs._

_Because that line of thinking draws Aff back to the rave where they got kissed so many times and they let Amanda wander off. The opposite of a pack, the opposite of the protection Aff wanted to provide._

The packaging of the bandaids is fiddly at the best of times, and trying to maneuver around half of a stab wound is not the best of times. After three separate attempts to open a single bandaid fails Aff can hear their own heartbeat in their ears. They stick their tongue between their teeth and glare.

A snarl builds too quickly at their throat and Aff is suddenly aware of the makeup of a change. Of the stress and the heartache and the feeling of complete failure.

_They feel a temperature spike, hot and uncomfortable under their jacket, with something pressing against their skin from the inside. They are suddenly hyperaware of the touch of Jamie’s thigh against their own, the draping edge of one of their sleeves is splayed against against their shoulder. Jamie is closer to Aff than Amanda was when they leapt for the guy with the knife, and Aff couldn’t reach her and their breath is hot and loud and caught in their chest and it could expand and pull their body into new shapes and it would be easy to reach over to Jamie with clawed hands and the moon is nearing full outside and the fucking bandaid won’t–_

“Aff,” Jamie says. Their voice is normal, for all the darkness in their eyes and the immovable power of their body, and the sound of it sends everything crashing inside of Aff to a screeching halt.

Suddenly self-conscious, Aff can only see Jamie staring at them. It’s a deep kind of stare, unending, and it helps the breath in Aff’s chest slow.

The bandaid packaging is easy to tear now.

“Sorry,” the whisper creeps out of Aff’s throat. Jamie simply shrugs in response, somehow not shifting their bare hands in the slightest as their shoulders move.

Aff feels as if they’re watching someone else’s hands as the first bandaid is wrapped, carefully, around the pinkie of Jamie’s left hand. The person other than Aff does their best not to apply too much pressure, but Jamie isn’t giving them any clue as to how this is going. They try to be even gentler with the second. It only takes three for the pinkie before they move to the ring finger. The car has gone gently quiet.

_Aff has seen Jamie roll brightly colored candies down their hands like a coin trick before flicking them back into the sleeves of their shawl with ease._

_They’ve seen Jamie’s hands trace impossible shapes sharply through the air and tug on the very strings of life itself to pull images out of thin air and hurt the people that would hurt anyone else._

_They’ve felt their hands wrap firmly around their back when they kiss, and Aff knows they are cool and steady even in the heat of a crowd of pressing bodies._

And yet nothing prepares them for the sheer sensation of taking the time to carefully wrap each of Jamie’s fingers in bright blue bandages covered in little purple butterflies in the dim evening light that’s almost becoming morning.

The oily paper wrappers and linings of the bandages soon are scattered about Aff’s lap like some weird kind of flower petals, and Jamie’s fingers are more blue than white at this point. They even manage to paste a few bandages over the worse sections of their palms, wrapping some around the sides of their hands, but they eventually run out of bandaids and have to leave a few patches of the palms uncovered.

Those patches almost gleam in the dark.

_What would it be like, to take the hand they’re already cradling so softly by its back, and raise it up to press a kiss to the skin of the exposed palm? To feel their own warm breath against Jamie’s skin again, but now in such a soft place. A place that says I don’t want you to hurt anymore. A place that would surely feel like peace._

But that would be crazy. Aff’s hand has a little blood on it still, and their nails are chewed and ragged, and they haven’t worn chapstick in like four months.

And Jamie probably wouldn’t want Aff just putting their mouth on their hand.

Obviously it would be crazy to bend down and press a kiss to Jamie’s palm in a moving car while the other two coolest kids at school (both of whom Aff has kissed before) watch in the rearview mirror after Aff has been stabbed by a cultist that probably killed the closest thing they had to a best friend.

_They’ve been holding Jamie’s hand for too long, but that internal hum from the drugs and the adrenaline has finally worn off. Maybe it was therapeutic, like the anger management tactics, to take all that time to provide care to someone else._

And at this point that the sheer comfort of holding Jamie’s hand in the silence has become impossible to move away from. And Jamie isn’t moving either, aside from a single tilt of their head. It sends their hair spilling in a vibrant curtain over one shoulder, and for a moment Aff is sure that Jamie can read minds.

And that they want to run their fingers, free of any sort of claw, through the lengths of Jamie’s hair. “What’s the prognosis?” Jamie says, instead of spilling all of Aff’s internal thoughts for all of the occupants for the car to hear.

“Oh, uh, sufficiently band-aided, I’d say.” Aff’s voice is skipping, spluttering, and they can feel the flush rising up on their face. “Actually, um, you’ve sufficiently become the butterfly,” they feel something like a grimace that they meant to be a smile stretch across their face at the joke.

 _Oh God the silence is suffocating. Maybe they misremembered something they said while they were high_.

As Jamie just continues to look at them they let go of their hands, quickly, returning their own hands to the proper place on their side.

“Oh, ouch, my stab wound,” they say and pull a grimace onto their face as soon as they can. “I guess I’ll need to keep my hands here, holding in my guts. For the rest of the trip! You should probably rest, or something.”

Jamie lets out a huffing chuckle, a soft exhale, and smile smoothly as they reach for the brim of their hat and tug it down over their eyes.

“Whatever you say, President Flowers.”

Aff finds that there is nothing left to say, but it is a calm kind of silence that settles over the inside of the truck. Aff also finds it easy to ease their shoulder against Jamie’s. There is no sleep for the night, but it is easier to gaze up at the moon from Jamie’s shoulder.

And in a way there is peace.

_And later, when they’re interrogating Terrence in the bathroom, Jamie’s fingers still wrench horrors into his mind and burn the lies on his tongue, but they do so covered in purple butterflies._

_And when they wave goodbye to the cop Aff lies to, the blue bandaids hit the light and accentuate the movement._

_And when they’re clutching at their bleeding side, maybe going to die from a gunshot wound from fucking Suzie Moreno’s lackey, the blood goes slick and brown against the bandaids and warps the colors._

_And finally, when they’re laying on their stomach in a church parking lot and the darkness slips from their eyes like a window shade going up, even as the police approach and the gravel stains their white shirt and the sun beats down on their back, they take a single incredulous moment to hold their hands in front of their face and flex their fingers slightly. They watch the bandaids, wound with care over their long since healed hands, move in the sunlight, and a smile that’s equal parts confused and impressed is on their face as the cops come up to talk to them about the shootout._

**Author's Note:**

> Aka I saw a sad picture of Jamie wrapping their own hands up in the car and got very sad because everybody else got to have tender healing moments and Jamie deserves one too.
> 
> Look I know Sasha probably sat in the back of the car for helping Aff heal from their stab wound. I know it. But what if instead that didn't happen. They got to have their moment in the parking lot. And instead we got soft bandaid moments.


End file.
